[OSGeo-Discuss] RE: [Majas-dev] [Majas-users] Flex in geomajas

[Leonardo Mateo]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 7:25 AM, Dirk Frigne <dirk.frigne at dfc.be> wrote:
> Sorry for the cross posting, but I found an interesting mail about
> performance and webmapping in the majas developers list.
>
> Today, Geomajas is written in Java for the server part, and uses Javascript
> in the frontend.
> Although the performance is good enough to support a proper amount of
> editable objects, we always are looking to mechanisms to improve the speed
> and usability of the front end.
>
> Pieter has done some tests with the Flex technology and they are very
> promising(details in his mail attached).
> Should it be a problem for distribution that the technology is shipped in
> the form of an installable plug-in instead of native browser technology such
> as VML or SVG, or isn't that an issue?
>
> And who has experience with this technology?
>
> I would appreciate your feedback ...
>
>
Ok, here's my grain of sand. I don't know what geomajas is, so I don't
know how much Flex would impact on this.
I've been working with Flex from the past two years or so, now a days
a little less intensive, but still working. I've worked with two or
three map API's for Flex and I have to say that totally worth it.
About the speed, I haven't seen any benchmark bu ActionScript3 should
be way faster than JavaScript and should work fine with large amount
of data, wether you use raw XML or some other technology such as AMF*.
About the downside Pieter mention there, I think in these days, the
Flash plugin is something you should have on a browser, it is not a
strange requirement anymore. However, you shouldn't confuse Flash with
Flex, even when a Flex application is a Flash movie, their are used
for completly different things and can work togheter since you can,
from Flex, use resources from an swf made in Flash.

Anyway, my opinion is: "go for it if your UI is complex enough", Flex
allows you to build a really complex, advanced UI with advanced
widgets that looks, performs and behaves really good. Programming AS
is way much easier than JavaScript (I come from a JS background too)
not to mention modularization possibilites with Flex Modules and
Libraries also, you should reduce the browser compatibility issues in
a 95% at least.


Hope it helps.
-- 
Leonardo Mateo.
There's no place like ~